100 Moments
by theFierceKiss
Summary: 100 Moments of Jane Shepard and Garrus Vakarian, together and apart. Updated irregulary, contains spoilers for Mass Effect 1,2 and 3.
1. Chapter 1 26: Tears

Turians don't cry. It's not that they don't' have tear ducts; despite having evolved thousands of light years away from each other, humans and turians shared many physiological features-tear ducts among them. Turian tear ducts, however, serve only to lubricate the deep set eyes and wash away impurities from the conjunctiva. Unlike Turians, humans shed tears of pain, grief and joy. As a result, Garrus Vakarian didn't think too much of the moisture glistening at Shepard's eyes other than to note the need to speak to EDI about Normandy's air filtration system. Only after he'd noticed Shepard hastily rub away at the moisture did he think something was off.

So when Garrus Vakarian remembered that human tears were often emotional, he was halfway through a new set of calibrations and had to fight off the desire to bash his head against the lumagel panel. He was amazed at his own insensitivity-Shepard probably didn't mind, was probably even glad that he hadn't noticed, but he really should have known better. When he emerged from the battery mere seconds later, mandibles flaring in irritation and disappointment at himself, Garrus was an avatar of all human nightmares about aliens who don't come in "peace."

"Hey it's only been fifteen minutes! Sick of calibrating already?" As the Alliance crew who'd been warming to Garrus in the preceding weeks hastily turned their attention back to the food, Lieutenant Vega called out after the sulking, charging turian.

"Vega, not now-", Garrus spat out, not slowing his steps for a second.

"Well, the commander's not in her cabin, you know."

The thud of booted feet stopped, and Garrus' weary form appeared around the corner to stare at James Vega. "I never said I was going to see her." "And I'm just saying she's not there. Traynor said she came back down to the war room."

Trying hard to keep his mandibles from flaring, Garrus shot Vega a look. James shrugged it off with a smile and resumed his meal. As he walked toward the lift, a little slower this time, Garrus realized that he may have been walking around with a sign above his head flashing "irritated, worried and restless." After all, a turian not in control of his body language and posture might as well be a book open to be read by all.

Such thoughts aside, Garrus was worried that Shepard was back in the war room. He had convinced her to catch some shut-eye after the Tuchanka mission barely an hour ago. Since picking him on Palaven, Shepard had barely slept two hours a day. This past week, she had been on a mission nearly every day, each on a different planet. Cerberus cybernetics were good, but Shepard was still human. Mostly, anyway.

As the doors opened, a nearly empty CIC filled his view. The Normandy escaped Earth with a skeleton crew, so when the Normandy and her commander weren't on an active mission, nearly everyone was dismissed to get some rest. Comm specialist Samantha Traynor was one of those who should have been down at the mess, grabbing a bite before hitting the bunk for whatever sleep she could get.

"Mr. Vakarian."

"I heard Shepard was in the war room."

"Yes, although we haven't received any comm requests from Earth or Admiral Hackett."

"I'll take care of it, you go get some rest."

Garrus was glad whether out of perceptiveness or exhaustion, Traynor acquiesced and stepped into the lift. He knew Shepard wouldn't be quite as easy to convince, but carrying her to the topmost deck on his shoulder didn't seem like a bad option either. With Traynor gone, the CIC was empty enough that if the commander didn't make a noise, they'd be able to sneak out unnoticed. The turian found, however, all his ire at Shepard's refusal to rest melted away when he spotted her in Mordin's old lab. Her shoulders shook; they shook so minutely that even with his turian eyesight, he'd have missed the shaking save for the warning flashing silently in his visor.

He heard Shepard take a deep breath in as the door hissed closed behind him. "'s that you, Garrus?"

Her back still turned to him, Shepard's voice was wet. The tone was a little off too, muffled? He knew he'd heard it before, though only once from Shepard. He'd heard it over the comm the day after Virmire, as Shepard requested Garrus to meet her for a mission planning session. A small tidbit of knowledge he'd picked up from Monteague, that human voice quality changes when crying, reared its head from a corner of his mind. Joker's voice, as he relayed Shepard's death three years ago had sounded like that.

"Shepard,"

She cut him off. "Did you know Mordin sang?" Garrus slid the doors closed of the glass briefing chamber.

"I heard him sing once, before the Collector Base."

This was news to Garrus, but he found that Mordin singing.. didn't surprise him at all. Instead he felt a deep regret, not unlike what he'd felt on Omega, collecting his team's sundries. The Mako model Melanis and Monteague had built together, Vortash's dog-eared prayer book, Butler's newborn daughter's sleeping form in a framed holo. As memories flooded him, he realized he'd done the worst thing possible by sending her up to her cavernous cabin. Shepard continued to speak. "He sang 'Scientist Salarian.' I didn't even know such a song existed." Feigned exasperation trailed the last syllable. Humans cried with their tears and with their voices. With the entirety of their being, it seemed.

Garrus realized, as he pulled Shepard in to his embrace, that he could now understand Mordin's last breath he'd heard through the comm. Explosions obscured much of it then, and Garrus' gut had tightened thinking it was the scientist talking himself through his thoughts. As he felt Shepard's body silently shake against his own, Garrus felt trapped inside the armor he'd worn like a second skin. As grief finally raged within him and the weight of lives lost crushed his shoulders, a tsunami of compassion for the human in his warms washed over him. For a brief second, Garrus wished he could shed the same tears.


	2. Chapter 2 19: On a Snowing Beach

Note: I've been sitting on this chapter for a week? two weeks? This chapter was written as it came to my mind, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to rewrite it or not. Hope you enjoy :) I plan on going through the entire list of 100 motifs, although I can make no promises about update schedule.

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><p>19. On a snowing beach<p>

Monteague never shut up about Boston, especially when Butler was around. The two Earthborn humans never shut up about the place; the food, the people, the accent-which in 2184 was still prominent enough to distinguish locals among humans, apparently-sports teams, Revere Beach, and other things. The aliens among the team shrugged it off and learned to tune the two out eventually. As long as the ever-curious Sensat wasn't stupid enough to ask, what about New York? Monteague and Butler tired of the topic on their own and the chatter helped ease the in-between mission tensions.

Garrus, however, never admitted that he'd listened intently each time the two humans talked about Boston, pretending to read a datapad or clean his rifle. He didn't know why talk of an Earth city drew his attention such a way. Talks of Sur'Kesh, Thessia, and certainly not Tuchanka had never fascinated him the way Earth did. He couldn't understand it himself, and surely would not have been able to explain it to others if asked.

At least, that's what he told himself each time.

When he couldn't convince himself he turned the translator off, but increasingly found he understood more of the human Common than he'd wanted to. He remembered more than he'd hoped. He learned faster than he liked, half-consciously clinging to each familiar syllable hoping to hear... Hoping to hear a voice that would never fill a room again.

The thought stung worse than a gunshot wound. It wasn't a realization really, because he'd known it all along-just couldn't accept it. Acceptance would undoubtedly lead to a cavernous, all-encompassing sense of loss. Garrus Vakarian had been down that road once, had left the Citadel lost in that dark abyss of grief. That wasn't so long ago, and he wasn't sure that he'd escaped yet. Powerlessness, anger, grief, guilt, betrayl-the hail of emotions and pain had been so overwhelming that he thought perhaps he'd died then and was in his own personal hell. A ghost lost in his hallucinations.

Garrus Vakarian found the thought amusing. The turian found his new-found name, Archangel, amusing too. Most of all, he found his lack of objections to both human concepts amusing. His acclimation to human culture and symbols had been a quick and unexpected one and the culprit's ashes were suspended in the atmosphere of a frozen planet in the Terminus.

Alchera. A celestial orb made of ice and carbon, glistening like a marble. Garrus had torn the extranet apart for orbital images of the planet and found it eerily beautiful. Ice and snow were foreign to him; Palaven stormed and raged, but never snowed. The Citadel's environmental controls didn't allow for such inconveniences to occur. Noveria was the first time the turian had come into contact with the icy, crystalline precipitation. Noveria, where she told him about Christmas and sledding and Santa Claus, all while wearing a wry smile on her lips because she'd been a Navy brat and never had a proper White Christmas herself either.

Everything led back to Her. Especially Revere Beach.

The day before he left the _Normandy_, the commander had pulled Garrus aside. With Wrex already gone, the two were the only ones in the cargo hold while the night-cycle crew worked in other parts of the ship. Garrus' leave from C-Sec was soon to be over, and a new decision awaited him. She knew. So instead of telling him whether he should accept the recommendation or remain at C-Sec, she told him about her shore leave just before she accepted her N7 recommendation. She told him about Revere Beach, skies gray and wind whipping against her skin, the frigid wet sand beneath her bare feet and the flock of sea gulls and her fascination because she had never been on a beach before-how cold would the water be?. She never mentioned Elysium or her mother's career or even Nihlus and Eden Prime. She described the snow falling and standing in the sand until she couldn't feel her toes anymore, silently arguing whether to wade in the seawater or to put her shoes back on and leave.

When Garrus asked what she did-did she wade in the water or did she leave?-the commander simply smiled, said it was time to catch shut-eye and headed to her cabin. The next day with the _Normandy_ docked at the damaged Citadel, Garrus formally resigned from C-Sec to begin his Spectre training. A week later Joker called, his voice misty and pained.

This was how an endless parade of _what if_s invaded the turian's waking moments. A cool breeze against his cheek plates, a glimpse of red hair, a stray syllable of untranslated human Common, the incessant broadcast of _Galactic News_ about the Alliance Captain Hannah Shepard's whereabouts, all circled back to the _Normandy_ and her commander.


End file.
